Workplace Wellness Programs Are Just an Excuse to Lower Your Pay

I don’t like workplace wellness programs. This isn’t because I think they do no good. It’s because I don’t like the idea of employers deciding that they can dictate my personal health choices. Or any of my other personal choices, for that matter. Maybe it’s for my own good, but so what? Lots of things are for my own good. Nonetheless, I’m an adult, and I get to choose these kinds of things for myself, even if I sometimes make bad choices.

Today, however, Austin Frakt and Aaron Carroll delight me by surveying the literature on wellness programs and bolstering my personal pique with actual facts. It turns out that wellness programs, in fact, generally don’t do any good:

Rigorous studies tend to find that wellness programs don’t save money and, with few exceptions, do not appreciably improve health. This is often because additional health screenings built into the programs encourage overuse of unnecessary care, pushing spending higher without improving health.

However, this doesn’t mean that employers aren’t right, in a way. Wellness programs can achieve cost savings — for employers — by shifting higher costs of care onto workers. In particular, workers who don’t meet the demands and goals of wellness programs (whether by not participating at all, or by failing to meet benchmarks like a reduction in body mass index) end up paying more. Financial incentives to get healthier sometimes simply become financial penalties on workers who resist participation or who aren’t as fit. Some believe this can be a form of discrimination.

This is basically what I’ve long suspected. For the most part, wellness programs are a means to reduce pay for employees who don’t participate, and there are always going to be a fair number of curmudgeons who refuse to participate. Voila! Lower payroll expenses! And the best part is that employers can engage in this cynical behavior while retaining a smug public conviction that they’re just acting for the common good. Bah.